Intrinsic Capacity, Resilience, and Meaning in Life in Community-Dwelling Midlife and Older Adults

NCT07687563 · Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 120

Last updated 2026-08-11

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

This prospective observational cohort (panel) study aims to understand how intrinsic capacity, resilience, and meaning in life are related and how they change over time in community-dwelling middle-aged and older adults who participate in community center programs in Taiwan. Intrinsic capacity is a concept proposed by the World Health Organization to describe an older person's overall physical and mental abilities, while resilience refers to the ability to bounce back from difficulties, and meaning in life refers to how people feel that their lives are valuable and purposeful. Participants aged 55 years and older will be recruited from collaborating community centers. They will be assessed twice: once at the beginning of their participation in community center programs (baseline) and again at the end of the current community center program (follow-up), which usually occurs about 3 to 6 months after baseline as part of the centers' usual schedule, without any intervention assigned by the study. At each time point, participants will complete assessments of intrinsic capacity, resilience, meaning in life, and sociodemographic background, and will undergo brief physical performance tests, such as walking-related and strength-related measures. At the follow-up assessment, a small number of participants will also be selected and invited to take part in semi-structured qualitative interviews about meaning in life. The main hypotheses are that intrinsic capacity, resilience, and meaning in life will change over time; that intrinsic capacity will be positively associated with meaning in life; and that resilience may mediate the relationship between intrinsic capacity and meaning in life. Sociodemographic information will be collected for descriptive analysis and to describe the sample, but it is not specified as a study variable in the hypothesis framework. In addition, the study will use supplementary physical function measures to better understand how the locomotion domain of intrinsic capacity is reflected by different mobility assessments. A small subsample of participants will be invited to take part in qualitative interviews to enrich and contextualize the observed associations between intrinsic capacity and meaning in life. These interviews are intended to provide a more complete understanding of this relationship and to reflect participants' lived experiences, rather than to establish causal relationships. This study seeks to address the limited longitudinal evidence on the association between intrinsic capacity and meaning in life in community-dwelling middle-aged and older adults. The findings are expected to help people better understand how these constructs are related over time and to provide useful information for planning community-based programs that support healthy aging.

Conditions

  • Healthy Ageing
  • Community-dwelling Older Adults

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Heng-Hsin Tung, PhD, RN · National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

Eligibility

Min Age
55 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2026-07-14
Primary Completion
2027-04-28
Completion
2027-04-28

Countries

  • Taiwan

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07687563 on ClinicalTrials.gov